Wednesday, August 11, 2010

I came across this interesting article so sharing here!! Its bit long, but take my word, you will find it interesting. Please bear with it!!

Every wonder why the American Investment banks / Lalit Modi / or those get away lightly always......the Reason is Indian Mythology (It is Vishun's Kar-na-ma that world over people follow........of late)

Another thing which is crucial to the financial services industry is the concept of being too big to fail, which has been put to good use by Citigroup, Bear Stearns, and Goldman Sachs over the past few years in sucking money from American taxpayers. This beautiful concept was also invented by an Indian - Vishnu Sharma, the author of the Panchatantra, in the story of the Weaver and the Chariot Maker.

The story of the weaver and chariot maker is one of the Panchatantra stories that usually doesn't make it to primary school textbooks or Amar Chitra Katha, mostly because it's full of sex, war, and moral hazard. Since you probably haven't read it, here's a quick summary.

A weaver sees a princess during a festival and falls in love with her. As a weaver, he has no chance of marrying her, so he sinks into depression. His friend, a chariot maker decides to help him out. He designs a flying chariot in the shape of Garuda, dresses the weaver up as Vishnu, and tells him to fly the chariot into the princess's room, tell her that he is Vishnu and wants to marry her Gandharva style. That is, the wedding is kept a secret from everyone except the princess and the faux-Vishnu. The princess agrees, and the weaver comes back every night to consummate the marriage.

Eventually, the maids notice that the princess is spending her days in total bliss, suspect that she's in love, and tell the King. The King asks her what's going on, and she tells him that she's married to Vishnu himself. The King is absolutely delighted, and decides that there's no point in paying tribute to the Chakravarti now that Vishnu himself is on the kingdom's side. The next night, he catches the weaver as he enters the princess's room and asks him to fight the Chakravarti's army.

The weaver is horrified. Pretending to be Vishnu was fine when it allowed him to make sweet, sweet love to the princess, but taking on the role of Vishnu to face an imperial army single-handed is another thing altogether. On the other hand, if he confesses to the King that he is not actually Vishnu and has been boinking the princess under false pretences for the past month, he will have his head chopped off. So he decides to get on to the battlefield and do the best job he can, while the King is whipping up enthusiasm in the population by telling them that Vishnu himself is going to do all the fighting.

By this time, Garuda (the real one, not the mechanical one) has tipped off Vishnu about what's going on, and warned him that if the fake Vishnu doesn't win the battle, the people of the kingdom will lose all faith in him. Vishnu doesn't want to see this happen, so on the battlefield he enters the weaver's body and annihilates the Chakravarti's army. The entire army. Every single soldier. After this, the weaver marries the princess, everyone goes on worshipping Vishnu, and the king becomes the new Chakravarti.

The moral is that you should conduct your affairs in such a way that if you fail, it will lead to someone or something even bigger or more powerful failing too. This lets you get away with anything.

The weaver got away with having sex with the princess on false pretences (this is rape under Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code), pretending to be a god (awesomely enough, this too is a criminal offence under Section 508), and annihilating an entire army that was fighting a just war - after all, it was the king who broke the treaty (you could make a case for this being genocide under Article 2 of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide).

American banks and financial institutions were very good at absorbing this lesson, and leveraged themselves up to such an extent that if they failed they would take the global economy down with them. And just as the weaver lived happily ever after with the princess, banks have lived happily ever after with taxpayer-funded bailouts.

But no matter how hard American investment banks try, Indians still remain the masters of this art. If the whole truth surrounding Lalit Modi is revealed, big politicians might be trapped. Modi is, thus, likely to get away lightly -- as is A Raja, who might have given away spectrum at bargain basement rates, but whose sacking would lead to the government collapsing. All this goes to show that no matter what the anguished elderly gentlemen who write letters to the editor feel, Indians are still in touch with our ancient and glorious culture.

There will always be a bail out in the EU. The PIIGS owe 700 billion to Germany and 900 billion to France. France and Germany are actually bailing out themselves.

Monday, August 9, 2010

Vacations are no doubt every man’s desire, but a really long holiday can become a pain, especially when you have nothing to do. Few would realize my pain, sitting in front of the Television sets aptly named idiot box, from 10-6 and watching the same news again and again and again. I cede the control of the idiot box to my mom in the evenings, who watches these hopeless soaps of the ‘Ekta Kapoor’ fame. With literally nothing to do, I too have to sit through the ordeal, during which I made some of the most bizarre observations:

1.Every soap has so many unwanted twists that it’s impossible to figure out what the original story line was. (Instead of twist in a story, the story is entire story seems twisted).

2.Without fail there is a character in every serial, mostly likely female, who is incarnation of Sati Savitri. She will be presented throughout as an epitome of Bhartiye naari. She will bear all kinds of domestic violence and cruelties quietly for months and even years until suddenly she becomes the embodiment of Goddess Durga.

3.What’s the point in having a resolute hero, if there is no villain? So, each soap inadvertently has to have a devil, generally male but lately fair sex can also be seen, whose only job seems to me is to plot against the lead character. These plots, read shadyantras, are so overtly complex that sometimes I feel why can’t our intelligence agencies use their services for unraveling the conspiracies?

4.Irrespective of the social standings in the serial, every female character is loaded with tones of jewelry all times, even when they are to sleep, an omnipresent, large sized mangal sutra hanging down their necks like a noose, an overdose of sindoor in maang and lastly high heeled footwear. I actually wonder how people shown, in the soap, living in mud houses afford such expensive jewelry and even absurd is the idea of wearing them 24x7. Frankly, I am confused that how many females wear high heeled shoes instead of casual slippers in their homes?

5.

The males, in these soaps, are even more overtly dressed. Lately the trend has been extensively embroidered long kurtas. Phew! I tried the same, but sincerely I would never give up the comfort of Tees and shorts, for such things.

6.

Another amazing fact of these soaps is they rarely conclude in less than 3-4 years. Most of them meet the fate of being booted out when their TRP’s hit the rock bottom. I wish I would ever watch a serial end gracefully.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

I have been idling at my home for quite some time and my not so good health is not permitting me to venture out frequently. An empty mind is a devil’s workshop and probably few would realize it better than me. With absolutely nothing to do, some weird thoughts are bound to cross my mind and one such thought that tickled my feather of thought was why weekends mean only Saturday and Sunday? Why can’t other days of the week be made into regular week offs?

The source of this weirdo is the recent initiative of the Tamil Nadu courts to run family courts on Saturdays and Sundays so as to help working professionals to fight family court cases. One of the reasons for this initiative was the spurt in the number of family disputes (read matrimonial disputes and divorce pleas). While this shows that matches are not made in heaven, but the point of interest for me was the working on so called weekends.

I sincerely feel that this initiative should be extended to other offices too. Rather than having Saturday and Sunday as weekly holidays, we can make a particular day in week holiday for a particular department. Pondering over this I came across some ideas:

Welcoming the Tamil Nadu initiative, it would be better if the same is implemented across the entire judicial set up(Supreme Court, high courts, etc.) across the country. The courts can have weekend on Monday and Tuesday, enabling working people to avail judicial services on Saturday and Sundays.

Considering that state governments and union governments rarely agree on anything, it would better if union government sets aside different days as weekly offs. Starting with the financial institutions (read banks, stock exchanges) can enjoy their weekend on Wednesday while other central government offices can be closed on Thursdays and Fridays.

Idea of having any day of the week as holiday has many fold advantages. The working professionals will not have to take unwanted leaves from their works for just trifle works, resulting in increased productivity. Another aspect is even distribution of traffic ensuring that on Mondays roads are not overly crowded while on Sundays roads lie bare.

No doubt that such a system would feel chaotic initially and may face stiff social acceptance challenges but over the time it might just prove to be vastly productive.

I don’t know whether this is a great idea or another absurd thought of an empty mind, but I wish to see it being implemented at least on trial basis.